Tidal processes cause silt to build up in Kirkcudbright Harbour, so regular dredging is needed to maintain safe depths and access for fishing vessels and other users. The work began in 1956 to provide safe access for
Shell Mex tankers, with the company’s lorry drivers initially clearing the harbour using hoses.
Today, a specialist water-injection dredger loosens the accumulated silt from the harbour bed, allowing the outgoing tide to carry it away from the navigation channel.
When these photographs were shared on social media, they prompted the following interesting comments.
I hosed the harbour out for years with J King and Bob Taylor and Andy Mc Kie. We would do four or five times a year. Morning and Night. John had spotlights. We used to do it four days a week always with outgoing tide and the opening of the Dam
Ian McIntyre
I think there was so much silt back then, it was dug out and removed in lorries. The job must have gone on for some time, the harbour had been badly neglected. The hosing out was part of the maintenance I think.
Bobby McClune’s landrover on the waterline. Bobby also used to haul coal from the station to the gas works in Gas Lane. The coal was shovelled from the waggons by hand into a small tipper lorry. In addition, he was a coal merchant, the business being extant today. He also had the contract for refuse collection. ” Where there’s muck, there’s brass. “Bobby was a hard working, enterprising man, taken too early.
KHS
The silt in the lorries was used to finish off the town tip and the reclaimed land up the riverbank.